Class TemplatePlotGroup

source code

Container that allows creation of different types of plots in a way that is independent of particular models or Sheets.

A TemplatePlotGroup is constructed from a plot_templates list, an optional command to run to generate the data, and other optional parameters.

The plot_templates list should contain tuples (plot_name, plot_template). Each plot_template is a list of (name, value) pairs, where each name specifies a plotting channel (such as Hue or Confidence), and the value is the name of a SheetView (such as Activity or OrientationPreference).

Various types of plots support different channels. An SHC plot supports Strength, Hue, and Confidence channels (with Strength usually being visualized as luminance, Hue as a color value, and Confidence as the saturation of the color). An RGB plot supports Red, Green, and Blue channels. Other plot types will be added eventually.

For instance, one could define an Orientation-colored Activity plot as:

plotgroups['Activity'] =
    TemplatePlotGroup(name='Activity', category='Basic',
        pre_plot_hooks=[measure_activity],
        plot_templates=[('Activity',
            {'Strength': 'Activity', 'Hue': 'OrientationPreference', 'Confidence': None})])

This specifies that the final TemplatePlotGroup will contain up to one Plot named Activity per Sheet, although there could be no plots at all if no Sheet has a SheetView named Activity once 'measure_activity()' has been run. The Plot will be colored by OrientationPreference if such a SheetView exists for that Sheet, and the value (luminance) channel will be determined by the SheetView Activity. This plot will be listed in the category 'Basic' anywhere such categories are relevant (e.g. in the GUI).

Here's a more complicated example specifying two different plots in the same PlotGroup:

TemplatePlotGroup(name='Orientation Preference', category='Basic'
    pre_plot_hooks=[measure_or_pref.instance()],
    plot_templates=
        [('Orientation Preference',
            {'Strength': None, 'Hue': 'OrientationPreference'}),
         ('Orientation Selectivity',
            {'Strength': 'OrientationSelectivity'})])

Here the TemplatePlotGroup will contain up to two Plots per Sheet, depending on which Sheets have OrientationPreference and OrientationSelectivity SheetViews.

The function create_plotgroup provides a convenient way to define plots using TemplatePlotGroups; search for create_plotgroup elsewhere in the code to see examples.